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VENICE, Italy — George Clooney’s “Suburbicon” has a timely subplot — based both on present times and a 1957 incident — about racism in white America. That subplot, however, resounded deeply during the Venice Film Festival press conference for the film, which stars Matt Damon and Julianne Moore.

“I was watching a lot of speeches on the campaign trail about building fences and scapegoating minorities and I started looking around at other times in our history when we’ve unfortunately fallen back into these things,” said Clooney, talking about how the pic germinated.

While casting around for story ideas, Clooney found a 1957 incident that happened in Levittown, Pa., in which an African-American family moved into a suburban development; however, many white residents in the area reacted with violence. Then, while looking to try to make a film out of the Levittown story, he remembered that the Coen brothers had written a script called “Suburbicon,” so those two elements were meshed together.

Of course at that stage the Charlottesville, Va., race riots had yet to happen, noted Damon, who in the film plays a bad guy who goes all the way, to an extent that he’s “never been able to do so far” in his career.

“When we were filming we obviously could not have predicted the race riots,” said Damon. “We weren’t literally thinking that race riots would erupt in America right before this came out. But it does speak to the fact that these issues have not, and are not, going away. So there’s an honest reckoning in our country.”

As to the character Damon plays: “It’s kind the definition of white privilege when you are riding around your neighborhood on a bike covered in blood murdering people and the African-American family [who are his neighbors] is getting blamed for it,” he said.

Clooney pointed out that the film’s very dark tone reflects the anger he sees in the U.S. today.

“If you go to our country…depending on what side of the aisle you sit on, it’s probably the angriest I’ve ever seen it,” he noted. “There’s a dark cloud hanging over our country right now.” But he added: “I’m an optimist…I believe that we will get through all these things…but people are angry; a lot of us are angry.”

The “Suburbicon” director also underlined that the film “isn’t a movie about Donald Trump. … This is a movie about our coming to terms constantly with the idea that we have never fully addressed our issues with race.”

Moore, who plays a double role in the pic, made a clear-cut a statement on the issues being raised by Charlottesville.

“We are living in the United States where people are arguing about removing Confederate monuments: They must be removed,” she said. “You simply cannot have these figures from the Civil War in town squares and in universities for our children to see. As a parent and as a citizen I need to be active in the eradication of those, in the re-education of everyone. We have to take responsibility for it.”

Clooney joined her on a similar note: “This is something that is really festering right now in the United States: Talking about the Confederate flag, and the Jefferson Davis monument,” he noted. “Now, if you want to wear it [a confederate flag] on your T-shirt or if you want to hang it on your front lawn…have at it. But to hang it on a public building where possibly African American tax payers are paying for it — and it’s a symbol of hate — that cannot stand.”

Here’s the first trailer for Subirbicon, set for release on November 24th.

‘Suburbicon’ is a peaceful, idyllic suburban community with affordable homes and manicured lawns… the perfect place to raise a family, and in the summer of 1959, the Lodge family is doing just that. But the tranquil surface masks a disturbing reality, as husband and father Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon) must navigate the town’s dark underbelly of betrayal, deceit, and violence. Directed by George Clooney, and written by George Clooney, Grant Heslov and the Coen Brothers, Suburbicon is this Autumn’s much-anticipated dark comedy, with a fantastic cast also including Julianne Moore, Oscar Isaac and newcomer Noah Jupe.

Here’s a first look at Matt Damon in the upcoming Downsizing, and an interview with the director Alexander Payne.

Despite a significant budget, mighty stars (Matt Damon, Kristen Wiig, Laura Dern), and a script over a decade in the making, Alexander Payne’s latest ambitious dramedy, Downsizing, features his tiniest characters to date: In an overpopulated world, scientists shrink humans to pocket size as part of a master plan to minimize all of mankind over the course of 300 years.

The film’s satirical tone — honed with longtime Payne collaborator Jim Taylor — touches on issues of immigration and the environment, though its Oscar-winning director hesitates to call Downsizing political. “It takes something inherently absurd, but tells it with utter earnestness,” he tells EW, likening the project’s sci-fi concept to Black Mirror by way of Robert Altman. “We’re more interested in making human films [but Downsizing is] an interesting prism through which to view our times.”

Finally, a movie that puts our society under the microscope. Read on for EW’s full conversation with Payne, and check out our exclusive first look image from Downsizing (in theaters Dec. 22) above.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: This film was shrouded in secrecy for many years. What can you tell us about it now?
ALEXANDER PAYNE: Downsizing imagines what might happen if overpopulation and climate change [prompt] Norwegian scientists to discover how to shrink people down to five inches tall and propose, very earnestly, the population’s two-to-three-hundred-year transition from big to small.

Jim Taylor and his brother had been kicking around the idea for a while. They were thinking oh, if you were only so big, you could have a huge house on a huge lot of only eight square feet! When Jim and I decided to do something with the idea, we saw it in more political terms… I don’t want it to sound too much like a political movie. We’re more interested in making human films. Humans are involved in politics, so we thought this story was an interesting prism through which to view our times.

You initially worked on the script for 2 and a half years between Sideways and The Descendants, right? Why did it take a decade to translate from script to screen?
This film was very difficult for us, and it was the reason why there was a long gap for me between Sideways and The Descendants. We spent a lot of time trying to perfect this screenplay. We don’t choose [when to make a film], it’s when we get financing [and] we couldn’t get financing for it. We also hadn’t quite cracked the screenplay yet; so as painful as that was in hindsight, I’m glad the film was made when it was made. The same thing happened to me years before on About Schmidt. About Schmidt was going to be my first feature in 1991, but I couldn’t get financing and maybe hadn’t quite cracked the screenplay, so it wasn’t made for 11 more years. It happens sometimes.

So it was still difficult to fund this picture, even after you’d just come off of winning an Oscar for writing Sideways?
There’s a huge leap in budget from a movie like Sideways to a movie like this one. Downsizing has a big scope, and we shot in many different places, and it has a significant visual effects budget. I was told a couple of times, and not in my words, it’s too intelligent to justify the budget it requires. But, I think people should just watch it and see it [for what it is].

Did working with a bigger budget affect your ability to retain your voice as a director at all?
Not at all. I always assume the audience is more intelligent than I am, I don’t care what the budget is… It’s a bigger canvas. People tell Jim and I that Downsizing is a real departure for us, but we think, no it isn’t, this is exactly what we do, it just requires a bigger budget. It’s exactly our same sense of humor.

I’ve heard the humor in this film is largely satirical. Which elements of society are you critiquing, here?
I don’t like to control the viewing of a viewer; It’s a movie. But, I guess like the previous movies I’ve directed, I don’t know if you’d call it a funny drama or a dramatic comedy, and I can tell you though that the “science fiction” element is really just a premise and an excuse to [set up] the story. I don’t think it fulfills the science fiction mandate.

But because you finished the script in 2009 and society has changed so much, the script must have evolved in response to everything happening in society.
Even on other films, like Nebraska, you write it at a certain point in time, and then, interestingly, when you’re finally able to make the film, events of the day have caught up to developments of the screenplay, which you’d already been thinking about. Given our bizarre political history of the last year, particularly the last eight months, it will shed new light on new some elements that already existed in the screenplay to begin with.

Were there specific things in society or culture you remember tailoring the script in response to?
We never do that. We’re not ripped-from-the-headlines or quickly responsive types, nor are we interested in being that. It just so happens that things that were in the air years ago when we started the screenplay are now in the air more than they were before.

Especially issues relating to the environment, because one of the reasons these people shrink down is to reduce their footprint on the environment.
Environment is huge in the movie, and that issue isn’t going anywhere. It’s been going around for a while. It’s just going to get worse. The film has a thread of immigration in it, for example, and that’s been in the news much more lately. Things that were in the air when we began years ago are just much more in the air now.

Is it foolish to ask you to elaborate on how the film tackles those subjects?
You gotta see the movie, and I wouldn’t be pretentious enough to say it’s tackling immigration. It isn’t tackling anything. It just has presence. It has an element of wit, which, depending upon what’s going on in the zeitgeist, will be more or less salient. Viewers may bring more perspective to the film given recent events, but my process hasn’t changed; the world is just a little bit different right now.

Why do you think this film has stayed with you so long, after all of the funding struggles and casting changes over the years?
The basic premise is a very delicious one, and it’s the premise that saw Jim and me through the many years to get this made… it’s very much like the previous movie Jim and I did, in that it takes something inherently absurd and ridiculous, but tells it with utter earnestness… kind of like what you see in Black Mirror. Some episodes of Black Mirror take a premise and run with it, but I’m not interested in the science fiction feeling; I always aspire to make a Hal Ashby or a Robert Altman movie, and the plot has a certain episodic structure.

You also reunited with Laura Dern here for the first time since Citizen Ruth. Were you actively seeking to work with her again?
Yes, I’m always looking to work with her, and it whetted our appetite for more… There was a small part in this, and she was kind enough to read the screenplay as a friend, and she said she’d love to play the part [though] it’s very small. It’s what they’d call a cameo in the old days.

Lastly, how does Downsizing reflect the filmmaker you’ve become over the years?
It has a lot of elements present in previous films I’ve directed, and I wouldn’t say it’s a summing-up, [and] hopefully I’m not repeating myself… It’s not for everybody, but I hope people like it.

The film, directed by Alexander Payne, will be released by Paramount in December.
Alexander Payne’s Downsizing has been selected to open the Venice Film Festival, which runs from Aug. 30 to Sept. 9.

The satire, written by Payne and his frequent collaborator Jim Taylor, stars Matt Damon as a man who decides to shrink himself in order to find a better life. The cast also includes Kristen Wiig, Christoph Waltz, Laura Dern and Jason Sudeikis.

The Venice berth is a first for Payne, whose films have played Cannes, Telluride, Toronto and Sundance, but not the Italian fest, where Downsizing’s opening-night slot should position it for high-profile awards-season bid.

Paramount plans to release the film Dec. 22. The studio recently showed off footage from the film at the annual CineEurope international exhibitors convention in Barcelona.

Last Sunday, Matt and his wife Luciana attended the 89th Academy Awards, where Manchester By The Sea, a movie Matt produced, was nominated. The movie received the awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor.

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